The theme of the University of Michigan Patient Safety Learning Laboratory (M-Safety Lab) is to improve the delivery of inpatient care by cross-linking investigators from diverse disciplines - including engineering, medicine, nursing, architecture and design and computer science - who share a common interest in patient safety. Our overarching goal is to implement novel methods to enhance cognition and communication among care providers in order to reduce hospital-acquired complications. The M-Safety Lab will include a robust infrastructure that will support two projects, each of which has the potential to transform the delivery of inpatient care. Both projects - Project 1 will develop a new monitoring system for hospitalized patients and Project 2 will address the common, but understudied area of diagnostic and therapeutic error - will be based on two major interrelated themes: Preventing hospital-acquired complications and improving medical decision-making through enhanced cognition and communication. We have assembled an extremely broad and productive group of investigators from a large number of synergistic disciplines. The Laboratory-Wide Aim is to establish a cohesive M-Safety Lab comprised of multidisciplinary, collaborating teams of investigators supported by a robust infrastructure including an Innovation, Development, Evaluation and Administration (IDEA) Core that will help oversee the development and successful completion of both projects from problem analysis to evaluation, and will provide methodological, technical, and administrative support for the M-Safety Lab.